life

“Life begins on the other side of despair”

by

It doesn’t matter where you are from, how old you are, what you do or what you entertain yourself with. It almost doesn’t matter how you think. Most likely the word “despair” causes you an automatic rejection. Normal, right? In life there are good sensations, others that are debatable, and there are those that are undesirable no matter how you look at them. Despair, anguish, is part of the latter because no one in their right mind would choose despair over hope. No? If we are clear about the above, why the hell in 1943 did the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartreone of the most prestigious minds of the 20th century, had Orestes pronounce the next words in his theater work The flies? “Human life begins on the other side of despair.” The question is timely because, unlike what happens in most literary works, here it does not seem that it is the character who speaks to us. If we take into account Sartre’s philosophy, in this case it is not unreasonable to think that it’s himself who moves Orestes’ lips to express his opinion. Did Sartre really believe that ‘despair’ is the door to life? Isn’t that a discouraging and gloomy panorama? Sartre and existentialism Before talking about how Sartre thought, it is worth knowing who Sartre was, one of the lighthouses of Western philosophy of the 20th century. Thinker, novelist, playwright, critic and political activist, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) is remembered above all for being one of the great exponents of existentialism. Without it it is difficult to understand the intellectual panorama of 20th century Europe and figures of the stature of Soren Kierkegaard, Lev Chestov, Albert Camus either Martin Heidegger. Although its seams are wide and there are important differences between authors, basically existentialism as conceived by Sartre (atheistic existentialism) is based on a premise: humans are born without a predefined purpose. We are not toasters, cars or TVs, objects created based on a concept and with a specific purpose. Nor are we the work of a superior “craftsman.” Unlike what happens with what we make as men, objects in which the “essence” is prior to the “existence”, in our case it is the existence that precedes the essence. What does that mean? “That man begins by existing, finds himself, emerges in the world, and then defines himself,” the French thinker clarifies in one of his key works, Existentialism is a humanism. “Man, as the existentialist conceives him, if he is not definable, it is because he begins by being nothing. He will only be later, and he will be as he has been made. Thus, then, there is no human nature, because there is no God to conceive it,” Sartre continuesand insists: “Man is nothing other than what he makes himself”, a creature “condemned to be free.” We have not chosen to be here. We have not created ourselves. And yet we are responsible for everything we do. It is not lost on Sartre that this scenario can lead to “anguish”, a feeling of helplessness and despair. He is not the only philosopher who addresses the topic (Heidegger and Kierkegaard also did), although it is true that the Frenchman’s work helps us understand how important sensation is. for him Anguish is nothing other than “the awareness of being one’s own future in the way of not being one”, an overwhelming feeling in the face of the range of possibilities that are open to man, radical freedom and lack of answers. This approach leaves behind an idea that is as fascinating as it is overwhelming: man is born with a huge challenge aheadthe challenge of living authentically, assuming your freedom, choosing your course, giving meaning to yourself and making decisions that will have consequences for your entire environment. There is no destination. There are no excuses. It depends on us. “Man will only be afterwards and will be as he has been made. It is nothing other than what he makes himself. If it precedes the essence, man is responsible for what he is”, warns us. “(Fyodor) Dostoyevsky writes: ‘If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.’ This is the starting point of existentialism. In fact, everything is permitted if God does not exist and, consequently, man is abandoned, because he finds neither in himself nor outside himself a possibility of clinging. “First of all, it finds no excuses. If existence precedes essence, the reference to a given and fixed human nature can never be explained. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, freedom.” “The first step of existentialism is to put every man in possession of what he is and to place upon him the total responsibility for his existence. And when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that man is responsible for his strict individuality, but that he is responsible for all men,” Sartre continues. Understanding this enormous responsibility and all its implications generates anxiety, but that has no why be negative. The reason? As Orestes proclaims in his dialogue of the The flies This hopelessness does not have to be frustrating or plunge us into inaction. On the contrary. “It is the very condition of their action because this means that they face a plurality of possibilities and, when they choose one, they realize that it only has value because it has been chosen,” illustrates the philosopher, drawing a parallel with the anguish that a general feels when he decides something that will affect the lives of his soldiers. “existentialism is an optimism, a doctrine of action,” claims Sartre, who ends his essay with a warning: those who use despair to attack it do so by “confusing their own feeling with ours.” It may sound like an old-fashioned lesson (Sartre died in 1980), but his words resonate strongly in an era in which we live hyperconnected, among related ephemera in which the need to search for meaning, identity and authenticity is especially felt. From the Paris … Read more

Sam Altman has spent his entire life saying one thing and doing exactly the opposite. And this time it didn’t even take 48 hours.

by

A Mecano’s great song —I know, this is very Kiss FM—he said that ‘the face you see is a Signal ad’. And in case any of our painfully young readers don’t know, Signal is a brand of toothpaste. And if there is anyone whose face is exactly like that, it is Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who with a perfect and convincing smile tries to convince the world that his company is just as perfect and convincing. For many people, today is not the case. what has happened. These days we have seen how the US and its Department of Defense (or War, as they like to call it now) have decided that if any AI company wants to work with them, they are going to have to let them use the AI ​​as they see fit. That we have to massively spy on people? He spies on her, totally, we have already done it. What should we tell AI to develop lethal autonomous weapons? Well too. Anthropic stands. But lo and behold, precisely the company that was working with the Pentagon He said that oranges from China. Anthropic, which had been collaborating with the Government for months—Claude was used for the arrest of Nicolás Maduro—, has made it clear that there are red lines that he will not cross. If Anthropic doesn’t want to, let OpenAI do it. At the Pentagon they have threatened to turn Anthropic into a pariah company, but at the moment they have not made any official move. What has happened is that the US Government has decided to change its technological partner. OpenAI has replaced Anthropic and appears to have reached an agreement to work with US defense and security agencies. Sam Altman seizes the opportunity. This has been indicated by Sam Altman, who in an ad on Twitter (I still resist calling her “X”) explained that her company had agreed deploy their models on the US War Department’s classified network. The curious thing is that this agreement establishes the same red lines that Anthropic had: no espionage on American citizens and no autonomous weapons. In the official announcement they even highlight that their agreement “has more safeguards than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s.” There is, for example, one more requirement: that their models not be used for “social credit” systems with which citizens are rated based on the information collected from them. But. Although both Sam Altman and the company’s blog appear to place limits on the War Department’s use of its AI, the terms of that agreement contradict Altman’s claims. The announcement mentions a specific paragraph of the agreement that explicitly states the following: The War Department may use the AI ​​system for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established security and oversight protocols. “The AI ​​system will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where human control is required by law, regulation or Department policy, nor will it be used to make other high-risk decisions that require approval from a similarly competent human decision-maker.” Mass spying on American citizens is legal in certain scenarios as part of the Patriot Act that was passed after the 9/11 attacks, and that would allow AI to process data and communications collected by mass surveillance systems. Jeremy Lewin, a State Department official, has indicated that this agreement “flows from the pillar of ‘all legitimate use’”, and points out that what Altman proposes regarding red lines is not as clear-cut as it seems. Internal protests. Last Friday at 5:01 p.m., Anthropic was due to accept the Pentagon’s terms, but it did not do so. During that morning, several OpenAI and Google employees showed their support for the ethical and moral positioning of the rival company, and almost 800 of them (681 from Google, 96 from OpenAI) signed an open letter entitled “We will not be divided.” Altman says one thing, does another. In an interview with CNBCSam Altman said on CNBC that despite all the differences he has with Anthropic, “I trust them as a company, and I think they really care about safety.” On Thursday, the CEO of OpenAI sent an internal statement expressing his desire for “things to de-escalate between Anthropic and the Department of Defense.” The message came to nothing less than two days later, when he announced the agreement with the same Department. Altman says one thing, does another. In an interview with CNBCSam Altman said on CNBC that despite all the differences he has with Anthropic, “I trust them as a company, and I think they really care about safety.” On Thursday, the CEO of OpenAI sent an internal statement expressing his desire for “things to de-escalate between Anthropic and the Department of Defense.” The message came to nothing less than two days later, when he announced the agreement with the same Department. The world against OpenAI. Many have ended up criticizing OpenAI’s way of acting on social networks. On Reddit they appeared several messages that encouraged users to “Cancel ChatGPT” with thousands of positive votes and also thousands of comments in which the tone was indignant with the way in which OpenAI and Sam Altman have taken advantage of this circumstance. We have seen critical movements in the past —Facebook, Netflix—, but it usually happens that after these first moments, companies end up recovering from the criticism and even come out stronger for a simple reason: Human beings have very bad memories. In Xataka | OpenAI has a problem: Anthropic is succeeding right where the most money is at stake

If the question is whether there was life on Mars, NASA has a new explanation: it depends

by

NASA’s Curiosity rover has been shedding light on Mars since August 2011, making authentic discoveries on its surface, in your clouds and of course, about its potential habitability. And if its younger brother Perseverance found a few months ago “the clearest sign of life we ​​have seen on Mars”, one of Curiosity’s latest discoveries is not so clear. What Curiosity found. Since 2012, Curiosity has been exploring Gale Crater, a place where there was a lake billions of years ago. In March 2025, while the rover’s integrated laboratory was analyzing a clay rock there, they found the presence of decan, undecan and dodecan. What’s that? Alkanes, that is, long chain hydrocarbons formed by hydrogen and carbon atoms. Why is it important. Because Curiosity’s discovery is the largest organic compounds ever found on the red planet and its size is such that its existence can hardly be explained by simple chemistry. On Earth, these types of hydrocarbons are usually fragments of fatty acids produced by living beings. However, on Mars, its origin is not so clear: it is reasonable to think of a biological origin, but with current evidence there is no confirmation. Biology or geology? The degradation of fatty acids causes the appearance of these hydrocarbons one way or another, but their presence does not imply that they necessarily come from a living organism. In fact, on Earth they can also be generated by geological processes. In short: detecting organic molecules on Mars does not mean finding life. Correlation does not imply causation. A “reasonable” hypothesis. So they analyzed the known non-biological sources of these organic molecules looking for an explanation for these quantities found. Since none of them fully explained this abundance, in this recent study published in Astrobiology that the research includes have raised a “reasonable” hypothesis: that living beings could have formed them. Among the known sources are molecules from meteorites that crash into the surface of Mars, cosmic dust, geological chemistry such as the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis plausible on early Mars or ultraviolet radiation, which in addition to destroying organic components can also form them, are some of the candidates. The method. To reach these conclusions, the team of scientists combined laboratory experiments, mathematical models and data from the rover, which allowed them to go back in time 80 million years to estimate how much organic matter existed at the beginning, before cosmic radiation destroyed it. The amount they were able to reconstruct far exceeds what unknown non-biological processes can generate. Of course, it does not affirm that there was life, nor are there fossils or biomarkers of course. In fact, their conclusion is clear: more studies are needed to conclude on the absence or presence of life on Mars. In Xataka | There are those who believe that 50 years ago we found life on Mars (and then accidentally destroyed it) In Xataka | China is getting closer to surpassing NASA in its Martian mission. And just invited other countries to join Cover | NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Artemis 2 passes its life test and clears the path to the Moon

by

The mission Artemis IIwhich aims fly over the Moon againdid not have the best of luck in its rehearsals before launch due to the fuel and a hydrogen leak. But now NASA can breathe easy, since the second general test with fuel of the gigantic SLS rocket It has been a resounding success. and opens the way for humanity to return to the Moon half a century later. Without a doubt. Between February 19 and 20, 2026, engineers from the US space agency managed to complete the loading sequence of propellants without serious incidents, stopping the countdown exactly at the expected moment: T-29 seconds. The doubts about the engineering team are left behind and an imminent launch window opens that could start as early as March 6. Master hydrogen. Filling a 98-meter-high rocket with more than 2.6 million liters of superfrozen fuel is no easy task in practice. That is why in the previous test, carried out on February 3, we saw how it had to be aborted when the clock read T-5:15. And the culprit was none other than NASA’s old enemy: liquid hydrogen leaks. It must be taken into account here that liquid hydrogen is an exceptionally efficient propellant, but tremendously elusive, since it requires cryogenic temperatures of -253 °C. This extreme temperature causes the materials shrink in the rocketfacilitating escapes and increasing safety risks for the crew. Although this is what NASA found during the Artemis 1 mission in 2022. The repair. For this second attempt, NASA technicians meticulously replaced the defective seals and filters and the truth is that the move went perfectly. And during this last test, the filling was completed normally and the exhaust controls worked wonderfully. One step closer. The success of this trial is essential so that the Artemis program is not further delayed and neither is everything that will come after it. If we put ourselves in context, the Artemis mission was scheduled for September 2025, but was delayed until spring 2026 due to technical problems in the heat shield, batteries or control system of the Orion capsule. A big blot on paper that NASA needed to make up for with some success like this. When will it be released? In this way, the space agency already has its sights set on the launch window that opens from March 6 to 30the most optimal being to do it between March 6 and 11. That is why if everything follows the planned plan, the Orion capsule will be launched on a free return trajectory on a trip of approximately 10 days around the Moon, without landing on the moon. The objective. On board will be four pioneers who will take over the Apollo missions: Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen. Its mission is not only historic because it is the first manned flight of the program, but because it will serve to validate all life support systems before the main course: Artemis III. A project that has its sights set on carrying out the first manned landing on the south pole of the Moon since 1972 and, above all, overtaking competing countries such as, for example, China, which makes very significant progress in the space race. Images | POT Pedro Lastra In Xataka | NASA has managed to grow lettuce in space. What he discovered next was not part of the plan

The Spanish philosopher who defends that what is important is in the simple things of everyday life

by

Anyone who has visited Bruges and wandered through its streets has ended up coming across a wonderful little park surrounded by white houses. He Belgian city beguinage It is, along with twelve others spread throughout Flanders, a World Heritage Site since 1998 and no wonder. Although “it is not known how this movement began,” as Silvana Panciera explainedsociologist and author of a book about them; The truth is that since the 12th century and for centuries, “they proposed that women exist without being wives or religious, emancipated from any male domination.” The curious thing is that the beguinage, like convents and religious writers, are becoming fashionable. Very fashionable. And no, I’m not talking about the Catholic ‘revival’. In recent weeks, the temporary “coincidence” of ‘Sundays‘by Ruiz de Azúa or ‘Lux‘ from Rosalía, had raised the murmur that “Catholicism was back“But, really, I don’t talk about that. As books like ‘Mystics’ by Begoña Méndezwe are talking about something deeper: something that, behind the Catholic trappings, speaks directly to an entire generation of young women. Something that, in the words of Jorge Burón“opens common horizons instead of individual ones.” Saint Teresa was right. Saint Teresa of Jesus may be the most important Spanish thinker in all of history and, very often, readings that are excessively attached to the Christian background prevent us from appreciating the philosophical power that is hidden behind it. Today, when the tensions between personal life and professional development are especially intense in a generation of women that has abandoned traditional frames of reference without yet embracing new ones, Teresa de Cepeda’s ideas are especially relevant. “Between the pots.” A well-known example is in the ‘Book of foundations’when he says that “…understand that, if it is in the kitchen, the Lord walks among the pots, helping you internally and externally.” In that passage, Teresa defends that there is no war between inner life and outer work, that the underlying criterion is not what we do, but how we do it. However, it is not a defense of “everything doesn’t matter.” On the contrary, what he rejects is the automatic superiority of the “elevated” over the “everyday.” Seeking God (the meaning of life, who we really are) is not something we demand the most absolute solitude: It is something that must be done wherever it is necessary. Where it touches. It is not a cliché: a few days ago we argued that the feeling of the end of the era, acceleration, saturation, existential anxiety or problems of legitimacy are something inherent to our days. The feeling that the future is a fiction is the order of the day. Therefore, it can surprise no one that Saint Teresa is more alive than ever encouraging us to take charge of our day. Image | Teresa, the body of Christ In Xataka | The Catholic Church changed the psychology of Europe. Unintentionally, it sparked an era of technological innovation

“The greatest obstacle in life is the wait for tomorrow and the loss of today”

by

Neither war, nor hunger, nor love. Nor hate, friendship or illness. If there is something that has really bothered us humans throughout the centuries, it is the passage of time. We all (from the richest to the most miserable) come into the world with our days scheduled. Sooner or later we run out of rope without anyone being able to prevent it. It’s that simple. In fact (and for cruel ironic as it may sound) that is one of the very few certainties that we can embrace during our existence, be it more or less extensive: there is no life without death. It’s nothing new. Centuries ago philosophers realized that, in a way, as our lives progress so does our death. If time is short must be valuable (just as happens with precious metals or gems) and everything valuable always brings a challenge. How the hell do you manage it? How to get the most out of it? What’s more, why try to get ‘the most out of it’? Are those who insist on making something of their time happier? useful and helpful Who do you see spending your days lying on the beach? Seneca to the rescue A few centuries ago, around the year 55 AD, there was a Latin philosopher (born in Cordubawhat is now Córdoba and then acted as the capital of Hispania Ulterior) who raised these same questions. His name was Lucius Anneeus Seneca and the answers he found were captured in works such as ‘De brevitate vitae’a text dedicated to a certain Paulino (his father-in-law or brother-in-law) in which he outlines a series of advice. One of the most famous can often be seen in the anthologies of aphorisms: “The biggest obstacle in life is the wait for tomorrow and the loss of today“. The phrase connects with the old maxim of tempus fugit (“time flies”), although there is more to it than may seem at first glance. In it, Seneca addresses one of the most complicated challenges for those who have set out to ensure that time does not slip through their fingers: the balance between the present and the future. A present that is our only certain reality and a tomorrow that will in turn be conditioned by what we do today. In other words, do we bet everything on the present or is it wiser to condition it with tomorrow in mind? They were interesting questions in Rome in the first century AD and they remain so today, twenty centuries later, in procrastination times in which the equation becomes even more complicated. At the end of the day, procrastinating is nothing more than setting traps in time management: deferring, postponing, delaying the moment in which we must carry out a task that (usually) will be beneficial for our future. Seneca’s starting point is as suggestive as it is challenging. Our time may be limited, but that doesn’t mean life is necessarily short. If it seems that way, it is because we ourselves favor it by facing it in the wrong way. And that doesn’t just happen by lying on the couch with your cell phone to kill the hours abandoned to the pleasure of the infinite scroll. For Seneca, the outlook is not much better if we obsess over tasks that make us believe that we do not have enough hours in the day, but in reality they are unimportant. “We don’t have a shortage of time, what happens is that we lose a lot. Life is long enough and to do the most important things it has been generously given to us, if all of it is used well.” “But if it is scattered in ostentation and carelessness, where it is not spent on anything good, when at last the inevitable final trance comes upon us, we realize that a life has passed that we did not know was happening.” “It is like this: we do not receive a short life, but rather we make it short“, concludes the Stoic thinker, who died in 65 AD, aged about 70. The complete reflection that Seneca dedicates to Paulinus and from which the phrase we previously cited about “the loss of today” is extracted is more devastating because it warns of how easy it is to give in to the mirage that we are taking advantage of time. Here we reproduce specifically the translation made by Francisco Socas Gavilán for the version of the Virtual Library of Andalusia. “Can there be anything more stupid than the attitude of some, I mean those men who presume to be far-sighted? They are engaged in too many tasks to be able to live better, they equip life by spending life, their thoughts direct them to the distance. But, of course, the greatest waste of life is procrastination: it cancels each day that is presented, it hides the present while promising what lies ahead.” “The greatest hindrance to living is the expectation that depends on tomorrow and loses what is today. You dispose of what is in the hands of luck, you abandon what is in yours. Where do you look? Where do you orient yourself? All future things remain uncertain: live immediately.” Seneca’s work resonates strongly twenty centuries later because, as remember Socasnot only tells us about death and the passage of time, but also about “life as a positive realization within a limited scope.” “Even though men can’t stop complaining about the brevity of lifethey alone are the real culprits of shortening it with their laziness and vices. “We waste time and do not consider it the greatest and only good,” duck. “The solution will be neither hyperactivity nor laziness, because those who are very busy, always thinking about tomorrow, do not take advantage of their time and are soon surprised by old age, while in idleness passions and amusements rob us of our intimate peace,” comments Socas after remembering Seneca’s words. “The idle fear death more. The busy will not be able to … Read more

We have been searching for the origin of life in hot puddles for years. Bennu has shown that radioactive ice works just as well

by

When the capsule OSIRIS-REx mission landed in the Utah desert in September 2023, NASA knew it had a treasure on its hands. We are talking about a bit of black dust that was collected millions of kilometers from Earth and that was about to rewrite one of the most important chapters of science: the origin of life. What we knew. Until now, the predominant theory regarding the origin of life told us that for “cook” all the basic components of life, such as amino acids, heat and liquid water were needed to make a kind of hot chemical soup. However, science has just flipped the script: the bricks of life They are not only formed in heatbut they can be born in the most extreme cold and under gamma radiation. And that completely changes our understanding of how we got here, and also of the possible presence of life in any corner of the Universe. The importance of Bennu. Definitely is the protagonist of this whole story, and it is nothing more than an asteroid of about 500 meters in diameter which functions as a fossil from the early solar system. But the most interesting thing is that it is approximately 4.6 billion years old, the same age as the Earth, although, unlike our planet, its surface has not melted or been drastically altered by geological processes throughout its ‘life’. And little by little we are learning more about this asteroid thanks to the samples brought by OSIRIS-REx that had already been confirmed in preliminary analyzes an unusual abundance of carbon, nitrogen, water and organic compounds. But what the team led by Penn State University has now found goes one step further. The surprise. This same team, when analyzing the isotopic composition of the amino acids present, especially glycine, came across a chemical signature that did not fit with the classical theory of formation in hot water. A radioactive freezer. Until now, we thought that amino acids in asteroids were formed primarily through aqueous alteration processes: ice melts from heat, liquid water interacts with rock, and voilacomplex organic chemistry. However, science now suggests that liquid water is not necessary for amino acids, an essential molecule of life, to form. Simply from simple ice they can arise without much problem. And there are many of these in the universe. The catalyst. The other important factor in this formation was the energywhich in this case came from gamma radiation emitted by radioactive elements that were abundant in the early solar system. And the energy could not come from thermal heat, since this process occurs in icy environments, long before the asteroid was compacted or heated enough to have liquid water. This explains why we found amino acids both in asteroids that underwent a lot of water heating and in those that remained “drier” and colder. Life, it seems, is more stubborn than we thought and can begin to develop in the most hostile conditions of the vacuum of space. An increasingly complex menu. But we are not just talking about simple molecules, since analyzes of Bennu samples have identified a variety of compounds. Among these is tryptophan, which is an essential amino acid, much more structurally complex, and vital for terrestrial life. Besides, DNA and RNA components have been detectedin addition to ammonia and amines, surpassing in richness many samples of famous meteorites such as that of Murchison. Backlash to Panspermia. If amino acids can easily form in irradiated ice grains in the solar nebula—before the planets even formed—it means that these “ingredients” are spread throughout the solar system. The fact that Bennu, a B-type carbonaceous asteroid, is packed with these compounds reinforces the idea that Earth didn’t have to produce all the components of life itself. A constant shower of asteroids and meteorites during the late intense bombardment could having “sown” our planet with a pre-made deep space biological starter kit. That is why in the end looking at a grain of Bennu dust is looking at ourselves. Or, at least, to the chemical great-great-grandparents who made us here today. Images | NASA Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | NASA has just announced that this large asteroid has a 1% chance of impacting Earth. That’s not normal

Madrid and Barcelona have built an entire social and business life with the AVE. They are finding out what happens when it fails

by

The Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line has collapsed. The trains do not arrive on time and no one pays their compensation, Adif has asked the companies to withdraw last-minute services, airlift prices have skyrocketed and there are companies working at half throttle because the goods do not arrive. A social and economic backbone of the country has been fractured. A Russian roulette. Taking a high-speed train between Madrid and Barcelona is, right now, Russian roulette if what you want is to arrive on time for an appointment. The link between the two most important cities in Spain has been broken via train and a round trip in the day is almost impossible. It is the result of a hasty revision of the train tracks, a direct consequence of the fateful Adamuz train accident (Córdoba) and the continuous warnings of the train drivers. Actions that have diluted the “high speed” concept between Madrid and Barcelona. What has happened? Since last January 18 An Iryo train derailed near Adamuz (Córdoba) and collided with another Renfe train that was traveling in the opposite direction, leaving 45 dead, Adif has been facing criticism about the track maintenance. In the case of Madrid-Barcelona, ​​the consequences were soon seen: speed limitations. Between confusing messages, Adif ended up imposing temporary speed restrictions at numerous points on the line, especially between Madrid and Zaragoza. Later, 300 km/h returned. But it didn’t last long because speed was reduced once again. The role of machinists. Since then, travelers between Madrid and Barcelona have been reporting severe delays, with trains taking more than four hours to reach their destination. As they explained to us Xataka From the SEMAF union, train drivers have the power to reduce speed if they consider it essential for the safety and comfort of travelers. They must notify the line controllers and put it in writing in a report. In addition, on each journey a document is filled out specifying the problems that have been found on the line. A train driver, who preferred to remain anonymous, corroborated this version to Xataka and made it clear that for months they have been traveling at a speed lower than the maximum speed allowed on the line and, especially, between Madrid and Zaragoza. Likewise, he pointed out that they have been complaining for months about the vibrations suffered by the trains but that they had not received a response until now. Adif’s role. Although unions and drivers claim to have been complaining about this situation for months, it was not until January when Adif appears to have taken more far-reaching measures. The road manager is doing an exhaustive review of the roads based on the continuous complaints from workers. These inspection and repair works, when necessary, are delaying travel times. The company has asked Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo to assume that trips will be extended to three hours (and they just pointed out that these travel times will extend until December) but has also asked them to eliminate the last services of the day to have more time for their performances. Collapsed by land and air. The result is a collapsed train line. The trains are not arriving on time nor in the three hours indicated by Adif (instead of the usual 150 minutes). And the problem for those passengers, who throw in the towel with punctuality, is that The companies are not responsible for compensation either. for delays, pointing out that they are the result of a problem beyond their control and that, therefore, they do not fall within the refund policies. At the same time, demand on flights has skyrocketed. Without the possibility of getting there and back within the day by train or for fear of doubling the usual travel time, travelers have turned to airlines. And the result is full flights and skyrocketing prices. After some bills will reach 300 euros, Iberia has reached its Air Bridge at 99 euros per trip. Vueling has also increased its frequencies. And the road alternative did not improve the situation either. Only in BlaBlaCar has an increase in demand of 130% been recorded, in data provided to The Newspapercompared to the previous year. Car rental companies do not seem to have been left behind either, since The Ombudsman has asked the CNMC to analyze whether illegalities have been incurred by skyrocketing prices for car rentals and plane tickets. And problems for companies. Companies in both cities have not only had to see meetings canceled or postponed these days. Some of them are having problems having their raw materials. In The Vanguard They include the case of some of them. Inovyn, in Martorell (Barcelona) had to send its 300 employees home earlier this week because they did not have the basic materials to produce plastic. “In normal situations we receive one train a day loaded with dichloromethane, a material with which we manufacture many of our compounds, but in the last ten days we have received only one train,” they explain to the newspaper. They explain that 18% of the goods that arrive at the port of Barcelona are sent to their destination by train. Those that use international gauges are stopped due to works in the Rubí tunnel and those that use the Iberian gauge circulate at night and in dribs and drabs. and in The Country They explain that the city’s port is becoming isolated, with an 80% drop in products coming from Germany, France or Poland by train. The road alternative is not working either. The AP-7 already there is enormous congestion since road tolls were lifted but, furthermore, there are not enough trucks to be a complete alternative given the volume of goods that move along the railways. Added to this are problems derived from the latest storms and the increase in traffic derived from a Rodalies service that has not been back to normal for more than ten days. Photo | Phil Richards In Xataka | Spain wants its AVE trains to travel at 350 … Read more

Samsung and Apple brought ultra-thin mobile phones to the market with little battery life. China’s response: hold my tank

by

Samsung was the first, and Apple followed a few months later. The introduction of increasingly thinner mobile phones on the market did not meet any specific need, beyond reducing weight and thickness. Betting on this format, at least with the proposals of Western manufacturers, brought with it sacrifices both in camera and autonomy. In China they are clear that There is no need to sacrifice one thing or the other.. The Honor Magic8 Pro Air. Recently, Honor presented the Magic 8 Pro Air in China. The surname already tells us where the shots are going. It is a mobile phone of only 6.1mm It has the best MediaTek processor It has a 5,500mAh battery It has a triple camera system (wide angle, wide angle and telephoto). It turns out that it was possible. There are a few millimeters of difference between the Honor Magic8 Pro Air and its direct rivals, the iPhone Air and Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. But the numbers speak for themselves. Honor magic8 Pro air iphone air samsung galaxy s25 edge dimensions 150.5 x 71.9 156.2×74.7x 158.2 x 75.6 thickness 6.1mm 5.6mm 5.8mm battery 5,500mAh Si/C 3.149mah Li-Ion 3,900mAh Li-ion camera system 50MP, 1/1.3″, OIS 64 MP, /1.2″, OIS 50MP 48 MP 1/1.56″ OIS shift sensor 200 MP, 1/1.3″, OIS 12MP,1/2.55″ The Honor device is 0.3mm thicker than an S25 edge and 0.5mm thicker than the iPhone Air. To give you context, there is a guitar pick difference and a 75% higher energy density in the case of the Chinese mobile. An outrage. Furthermore, China has shown that it is not necessary to give up a single camera to opt for this format. And when we talk about flagships, this point is key. The 10K club. Beyond demonstrating that in ultra-thin mobile phones, silicon-carbon technologies allow energy densities that were impossible until a few years ago, the “10K club” is adding more and more participants. Chinese phones with normal thickness or even less than usual with 10,000mAh batteries. The last one to join the club was Realme P4 Powerthe first mobile phone in the world with a 10,001mAh battery. These are figures that double the usual standard in the rest of the ranges. The answer? There is neither nor is it expected in the short term. China has been ahead in the race to deploy silicon-carbon batteries, one that is not so easy to get into. Such high density batteries require: Greater regulations at the transport level, especially in the European Union. Much higher prices, as Xiaomi advanced. A durability risk not yet proven. Moving towards silicon entails important changes that traditional manufacturers, accustomed to a conservative and slow strategy, are not yet willing to take on. Image | Honor In Xataka | The 80/20 rule seemed like the holy grail for cell phone batteries. It’s not as infallible as it seems.

Bugatti has brought the Veyron back to life in the worst possible way: taking advantage of nostalgia

by

I confess: I have laughed at my parents. Not once, many times. My parents are those considerate boomers. A generation that took the reins of our society when the century changed and we entered the 2000s. And the market noticed it. In 2001 it premiered on RTVE Tell me how it happened. Three years later it was republished he One, Two, Three…. In 2009, a phenomenon was launched that now seems timeless: I went to EGB. That same year, Antena 3 put on television Course of ’63. The look at the past does not only remain in Spain. The Police return for a new tour. Indy returns from the 80s to live an alien adventure in 2008. Guitar Hero puts us in the skin of the rock myths that had happened a decade or so before. Does anyone remember Guitar Hero Live? I doubt it and I think you already know the answer. And here I am, tasting at night the first seasons of There is no one who lives herewhile I watch in horror as my friends search for tickets to another Love The Tweenties and Villafrío de Abajo faces Villafrío de Arriba in another exciting final of the Grand Prix. I want to run away but the past catches me. That past that brings us back to Andy and Lucas but at least brings us back to the best days of Crash Bandicoot. A past from the day before yesterday. I laughed at my parents but here I am, drooling over the new Bugatti FKP Hommage. ELON MUSK VS JEFF BEZOS: STAR WARS Of necessarily unnecessary tributes and cars 20 years. What is 20 years? Enough, according to Frank Heyl, Bugatti Design Director, to “create what I consider the ideal and definitive Veyron.” What he’s talking about is the Bugatti FKP Hommage. We could say that it is the “last Veyron”. We could say that it is the final and last evolution of a legendary car. We could say it. If it were a Veyron. The Bugatti FKP Hommage is actually a Bugatti Chiron disguised as a Veyron. The hyper-luxury company, through its even more exclusive division Program Solitaire wanted to pay tribute to Ferdinand Karl Piëch, who was the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche and took the reins of the Volkswagen Group for almost a decade after having held all types of roles in the company. A key man in the company who was even more key for Bugatti. And Piëch was the one who gave the order to buy Bugatti and to make it a different brand, to give it back a glorious past, W16 via. “He was a man who saw the impossible not as an obstacle, but as a challenge. His vision for Bugatti was absolute: 1,000 horsepower, 400 km/h top speed, all-wheel drive, and refined enough to arrive at the opera in a tuxedo or a dress,” defines Hendrik Malinowski, General Director of Bugatti to Piëch. And to honor him, Bugatti has created a one offone of those unique units of your Bugatti Chiron. “The FKP Hommage celebrates this uncompromising pursuit of excellence, combining the timeless proportions of the original Veyron with two decades of engineering evolution,” reflects Malinowski about a luxury hypercar that comes with the latest evolution of the W16 engine and the 1,600 HP that the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport has. To resemble the original model, Bugatti’s most exclusive division has dressed the Chiron in the outfit that the Veyron would wear today. Play with the proportions to maintain the essence of a car of which only 450 units were manufactured. The request, of course, comes from a millionaire whose name we do not know. At least for now. But we can say something about him: he feels “melancholic sadness caused by the memory of a lost happiness.” This is how the RAE defines nostalgia. The question is what this loss has attracted a millionaire to convert one of the most technologically advanced cars in the world into another hypercar from just 20 years ago. What is the sense? Aren’t the 450 units of the original Bugatti Veyron unique because… they are unique? What is there to gain? Nothing. Since there is nothing to gain from updating an iPod when you have millions of iPods elder brother hand. It’s not a question of nostalgia. It’s a matter of the original product being there, just around the corner. We can’t miss him because he never left. You can’t long to go out partying singing Melendi at the top of your lungs because at less than 40 years old you are at the perfect age to continue going out partying and singing whatever you want at the top of your lungs. It’s okay for nostalgia to get to us. But at least it serves to give new life to the product. Unless it serves to make accessible an object of which there are few left, they are difficult to obtain or expensive to maintain. It’s funny that Renault brings back the Five in electrical format. And it makes sense that now the Twingo It also doesn’t have a combustion engine. Or what Renault brings the car back to life Turbo like an electric beast. As harsh as it may seem to a purist, even Ford Mustang Mach E It makes sense when it comes to bringing the driving sensations of a classic Mustang to an electric car. It is the same and, at the same time, very different. But the automobile market is beginning to be dragged into a well of nostalgia that contributes between little and nothing. He Lamborghini Countach LP 800-4 It is interesting as a design exercise because it updates a mythical model. This Bugatti FKP Hommage only repeats what is already known. The same is happening with the “serial” production of restomod. The trend of taking an old car and bringing it back to life by turning it into a modern car with a classic flavor makes sense … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.